Events

Weekly Devotions

This devotional material builds on the themes addressed through the art and corresponding reflections.  It may be helpful to keep an advent journal of your personal responses to the readings, reflections and questions.  To go deeper with this material, alongside reading the extracts from ‘The Undefended Life’ and reflecting on the ‘things to think about’ in response to these readings,  you will need to set aside time and find a space for the ancient practice of Lectio Divina, the Benedictine practice of ‘praying the scripture’.  (See below for an explanation of Lectio Divina.)  Take a few moments before reading and meditating to still yourself through focusing on your breathing.  If you are at home why not find four candles and light one as part of your reflection on hope during the first week .  In the second week light the first candle for hope and the second for love and so on.

The reading material will be available at http://www.moot.uk.net/events/advent-2011/reading-materials/ as online extracts taken from Simon Walker’s blog where he first posted chapters of his book ‘The Undefended Life’ in advance of its publication.   We recommend buying the book which is available for purchase in the small bookshop in the Church of St Mary Aldermary.  We will also be producing a weekly advent podcast which you can listen to at http://www.moot.uk.net/category/podcasts/

Explanation of Lectio Divina:

This explanation for Lectio Divina has been adapted from Cynthia Bourgeault’s book Centering Prayer and Inner Awakening, p. 65-7.  Lectio Divina offers a simple but comprehensive practice of praying the scripture that leads gradually but steadily from the mind to the heart. This deepening process is approached in four stages, or four “stations”.

The first station is known as lectio, or reading.  At this stage a short passage of scripture is read, slowly and aloud if at all possible.  As this takes place open yourself deeply to divine guidance and allow yourself to be drawn to the sentence, phrase, or even single word that seems to resonate with a particular kind of vibrancy or attunement.  This first and key step is founded on the faith that scripture is a living word – not just the history of an encounter with God that happened long ago, but one that continues to resonate and feed us in our own times.

The second station is meditatio.  In this classic Christian usage, the term meditation really means a concentrated effort of the faculties.  You bring your mind, your feelings, your personal associations, your visualisation to bear on the passage to try to get inside it and become intimate with it.  You might ask yourself which character you’re most drawn to and why; which one most nearly resembles your own basic stance toward life.  Or you might ponder a particular phrase or promise, noticing what your own response is.

The third station, oratio, means “prayer”, and it is at this stage that our deepest feelings are invited into play as we allow our hearts to speak to God.  Suppose, for example, that you were pondering the sentence ‘Do not be afraid, I am bringing you good news of great joy that will be for all the people’ and you sense that God wants to show you this joy, and you allow the guardedness of your heart to relax and feelings of wonder and gratitude begin to rise as a place deep within you is touched. Then you would be having an experience of oratio at its fullest.  This is the station at which scripture moves down from your head and begins, through your feelings, to engage your heart.

The fourth station is known as contemplatio, or “contemplation.” As early as the sixth century St. Gregory defined contemplatio as “resting in God.” At this point in the process all the mental and even emotional work is suspended.  The faculties are stilled, and one simply rests in the presence of the divine – “like a weaned child with its mother”  in the words of Psalm 131, the monks’ favourite metaphor for this stage.

Week 1: Living beyond fear – learning to hope and trust

Reading from Undefended Life: Chapter One

http://simonpwalker.blogspot.com/2010/03/let-us-go-back-to-old-story-one-of.html

Reflection:  The undefended life is to rediscover God’s freedom to live beyond fear…to live in hope.

In this first chapter Simon Walker begins to outline how deeply the fear narrative and our subsequent need for control shapes our lives.  The hope of advent is that a new narrative of hope and trust is now possible for us.

Things to think about:

  • What are the primary mechanisms by which you seek to control the future?
  • Spend some time looking at Mike’s paintings for this week in the light of the reflections on Zechariah in Luke.  What are the disappointments or unanswered prayers that make it difficult for you to hope and trust?  Where does the voice of resignation and despair drown out the voice of hope?
  • Where do you need a new vision of what is possible?
  • How can you remain open and hopeful in the face of an unknown future that you can’t control, trusting that it is secured by the faithfulness of a god who ‘is for you’?

Lectio Divina: Luke 1: 5-25

Week 2: Living beyond fear – learning to embrace risk

Reading from Undefended Life: ChapterTwo

http://simonpwalker.blogspot.com/2010/03/new-chapter-chapter-two-fear-narrative.html

Reflection: The undefended life is to rediscover God’s freedom to live beyond fear…to take the risk of finding our security in the life and peace God wants to bring to us.

Mary is a powerful example of what it means to live an undefended life, to take the risk involved in trusting God and participating in the divine project of life and peace, to renew, restore and bring reconciliation to every area of our broken world.

Things to think about:

  • In what ways do you operate a front and back stage in your own life?
  • Where do you sense the spirit wanting to bring reconciliation and peace to your inner world?
  • Is there an area of your life where you willing to take the risk of becoming undefended?
  • Are there relationships or situations where you can play a part in bringing reconciliation and peace?

Lectio Divina: Luke 1: 26 – 38

Week 3: Living beyond fear – learning to give and receive love

Reading from Undefended Life: Chapter Three

http://simonpwalker.blogspot.com/2010/03/new-chapter-chapter-3-architecture-of.html

Reflection: The undefended life is to rediscover God’s freedom to live beyond fear…to be able to receive and respond in love.

In this chapter Simon re-considers how we might understand the relationship between sin and self.  He explores the image of self as a ball of wool that is being knitted into a particular and unique shape complete with knots and snags collected along the way.   In this image the gospel is ‘not about paring away sins in order to get back to the real me’, it is about ‘re-stitching my whole story, allowing God’s love to penetrate my story far more systematically and far more fundamentally.’

‘Jesus invitation to us is no singular, general call to repent and believe.  It is a unique and specific word to me to repent – to give up, and turn from and abandon the particular strategies I have been adopting in favour of being made safe in relationship with him.’

Things to think about:

  • To what extent has your story been defined by the posture: ‘I am on my own; I must recruit sufficient resources around myself to cope’?
  • Can you trust God to love and protect what is vulnerable in you?
  • Is there a coping strategy, habit, attitude or belief that you feel called to let go of?
  • Where do you need to ask for grace to respond with love?

Lectio Divina: Matthew 1: 18-25

Week 4: Living beyond fear – learning to look for joy in unexpected places

Reading from Undefended Life: Chapter Seven p. 95 – 114 (corresponds to two links below)

http://simonpwalker.blogspot.com/2010/05/new-chapter-release-chapter-9-life-and.html http://simonpwalker.blogspot.com/2010/05/new-release-characteristics-of.html

Reflection: The undefended life is to rediscover God’s freedom to live beyond fear…to find joy in our daily lives

In this chapter Simon gives a picture of what it means to ‘participate in the realm of the Spirit concurrently with one’s life here and now’. He says there are two spaces we can live in: the ‘flesh’ and the ‘spirit’ and that these two realms of earth and heaven are not vertically located (below and above) or chronologically related (now and later) but ‘horizontally related, existing alongside one another in continual intersection’. ‘Eternal life as depicted by Jesus is to live in a space where we are secured by the love of our divine Father in each moment.  In this posture, ‘in the Spirit’, we experience freedom.”

Things to think about:

  • When have you had the strongest experience of ‘living in the spirit?’
  • Where have you ‘settled down’ into the familiar routine of a life ruled by the fear narrative?
  • In what areas are we being called to take responsibility but relinquish control?
  • What spiritual practices would help you to receive the day is it is given?

Lectio Divina: Luke 2: 5-25.